Marketing Kit for Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyles Paperback)) [Paperback]

Alexander Hiam (Author)

Book Description

Series: For Dummies (Lifestyles Paperback) | Publication Date: November 26, 2004

In his bestselling book Marketing For Dummies, Alexander Hiam revealed the secrets of effective marketing for every kind of business. In the first edition of Marketing Kit For Dummies, he presented a wealth of practical and effective tools and tactics for implementing effective campaigns quickly and cheaply. This new edition of Marketing For Dummies offers all the proven advice as the first edition, but with new information and state-of-the-art Internet marketing techniques.

Whether your business is large or small, staffed by a few people, a few hundred, or thousands, Marketing Kit For Dummies, 2^nd Edition offers everything you need to know — and all the tools you need to implement — for marketing campaigns that drive business results. Straight to the point and full of common wisdom on what works and what doesn’t, this book covers all the bases:

• Tap into the power of the Internet
• Create buzz with publicity
• Research, plan, and budget effectively
• Set up winning sales promotions
• Generate sales with action ads
• Launch winning Web campaigns

Expert author Alexander Hiam — marketing specialist, business professor, and operator of an independent consulting firm — gives you the handy specialized tools that make marketing a breeze. The accompanying CD-ROM is packed with practical tools from marketing plans, to advertising objective worksheet, to proven and effective Web page templates, and even free stock photography! With this marketing toolkit in hand, you’ll learn how to:

• Master the five Ps of marketing
• Evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing plans
• Design a marketing plan that works
• Perform customer research
• Improve your creative skills — and your campaigns
• Write winning marketing copy
• Develop a campaign budget and stick to it
• Brand your business
• Develop promotional campaigns
• Design brochures, catalogs, and newsletters
• Bring customers back with great customer service

In a world of mass media and global business, getting your business noticed is imperative to your success. After all, it doesn’t matter how great your product or service is if your customers don’t know about it. With Marketing Kit For Dummies, 2^nd Edition, you’ll have no trouble bringing in new business — and more dollars.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Quick and easy Web marketing techniques

"As good as an MBA in marketing."
—Elaine Biech, author, The Business of Consulting

This indispensable book-and-CD kit gives you the practical tools you need to implement effective marketing campaigns quickly and affordably. With ready-made forms and templates, the latest in online marketing, and even more specialized information for small business owners, this newly updated edition is better than ever.

Discover how to

• Impress and retain key customers
• Create buzz with publicity
• Research, plan, and budget effectively
• Set up winning sales promotions
• Generate sales with action ads
• Launch effective Web campaigns

All this on the bonus CD-Rom

• Marketing plan and budget templates
• Spreadsheets to create sales projections, coupon profitability analysis and more
• Hiam's Marketing Audit forms, a customer service survey along with templates for designing print ads, brochures, business cards, press releases and sales scripts

Please see the "About the CD-ROM" Appendix for details and complete system requirements.

About the Author

Alexander Hiam teaches management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and runs a training and consulting firm. He is also the author of Marketing For Dummies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: For Dummies; 2 edition (November 26, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764559990
• ISBN-13: 978-0764559990
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #970,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Hiam has written extensively on business topics ranging from leadership and conflict management to marketing. He is an award-winning author of more than 20 books, including: Vest Pocket CEO, Adventure Careers, Marketing For Dummies, Closing the Quality Gap, and The Manager's Pocket Guide to Creativity.

His newest work, Business Innovation for Dummies (June 2010, Wiley), is a how-to guide that offers practical techniques for stimulating imagination and developing ideas into successful innovations.

When he's not writing, Hiam is a sought-after speaker on innovation, creativity and leadership. Thousands of managers - including Fortune 500 and government leaders - have attended his workshops and idea-generation retreats, and relied on his guides: Creativity By Design, Creative Roles Analysis, and The Entrepreneur's Complete Handbook.

Hiam holds a B.A. from Harvard College in anthropology and an MBA in marketing and strategic planning from the University of California, Berkeley. For more than 12 years, he has worked at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Isenberg School of Management, with additional teaching posts at American International College and Western New England Collage.

Today, Hiam is a consultant to a diverse set of clientele. At the U.S. Coast Guard's Leadership and Management School, he provides assistance with curriculum design for leadership development. His leadership novella, The Starfish Files, is required reading for U.S. Coast Guard leaders. Hiam also provides leadership training to nonprofit and government groups, extending his well-honed innovation principles beyond the private sector for clients ranging from the U.S. Army and U.S. Senate to the City of New York. In the business arena, Hiam's creativity exercises are used by top advertising agencies to help their staff be more open to fresh ideas.

His educational publishing company, Trainer's Spectrum (www.trainersspectrum.com), features assessments, workshops, books, and learning games for team building, leadership, conflict management and other employee development programs. He is also the developer of the Dealing With Conflict Instrument and the Strategic Leadership Type Indicator. His personal Web site is at www.alexhiam.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Dictionary for Marketing Your Company, June 21, 2000

By 

K. Sydnor "[e-mail]" (Whitehouse, Texas United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marketing Kit for Dummies (Paperback)

I loved this book. I needed an quick read, easy to navigate, marketing information for a new business. After reading this book one afternoon I quickly learned new information as well as refreshed my memory on other important and critical marketing principles. I keep this book next to my dictionary in the office. These are the two books I use the most when writing and designing dynamic attention ads and new client generators.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good starter..., January 27, 2003

By 

"lizmcf" (Bethesda, MD USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Marketing Kit for Dummies (Paperback)

This book is extremely basic but has great templates that ensure you cover all the fundamentals.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Helpful, March 21, 2007

By 

Monty Rainey (New Braunfels, TX) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Marketing Kit for Dummies (For Dummies (Lifestyles Paperback)) (Paperback)

I believe if Forrest Gump were reviewing the "for Dummies" series of books, he would say they are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get. I have found a few of these "for Dummies" books to be exceptional, others to be marginal at best, and yet some like this one, MARKETING KIT FOR DUMMIES by Alexander Hiam, that fall somewhere in the "helpful" area.

This book is not exceptionally well written, but does have some pearls scattered throughout. The book is broken into six parts and twenty one chapters. The problems I had with this book start here. Hiam tried to make the chapters and sub-chapters fit into the six parts and some of them just don't seem to belong there. That in and of itself is okay. It's nice to find unexpected resources. But it makes navigation of the content rather difficult.

Another pearl here is the CD. I haven't used it yet, but have downloaded it and it looks quite useful for an array of marketing purposes. Perhaps it will prove itself to be worth the book price.

I guess I would have to say, if you are a business looking for an improved marketing strategy, there are worse places to start, but there are better ones as well. You'll find some useful information here, and strategies that will have a quick impact on your bottom line.